History may have forgotten Caroline of Ansbach, but she certainly left an indelible impression on everyone who met her.

The future wife of George II was possessed of ‘a bosom of exemplary magnitude’, wrote one dazed witness. And, according to her biographer, Matthew Dennison, ‘the legendary renown of her magnificent bosom’ spread through the kingdom.

Mercifully, there turns out to have been rather more to Caroline than that.

Matthew Dennison reveals the forgotten impression Caroline of Ansbach (pictured) left on those who met her in a new biography

When she married Prince George Augustus of Hanover in 1705, no one took much notice of her — least of all her dimwit husband. She had been chosen as his bride mainly because she spoke the same language — German — and appeared to possess the sole requirement of a royal spouse: fertility. Right from the start, though, Caroline made it clear she saw her role in very different terms.

In 1714, George became Prince of Wales and the couple moved to England — where Caroline set out to woo everyone she came into contact with. She was so keen to ingratiate herself with the Welsh that she wore a large leek on St David’s Day — alas, history does not record how, or indeed where, she wore it.

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When George became king in 1727, they moved into Kensington Palace, where Caroline promptly kicked out the tigers and civet cats that roamed the place and replaced them with giant tortoises. She turned a blind eye to her husband’s numerous affairs — he seems to have been powerless to resist sexual temptation. An early keep-fit fanatic, Caroline would go on long walks around the grounds every day, often accompanied by court musicians playing French horns. She also took an unusual — for the time — number of baths, ordering 20 new wooden tubs for the royal household.

THE FIRST IRON LADY by Matthew Dennison (William Collins £25)

She went to the theatre whenever she could, championed inoculation, studied Newtonian physics and kept abreast of new ideas. Not everyone was smitten, though.

One visitor described Caroline as ‘fat and very ugly’; and she once was burned in effigy by a mob who blamed her — quite unfairly — for a rise in tobacco duty.

As Matthew Dennison’s title suggests, he sees her as a kind of spiritual forebear of Margaret Thatcher, possessed of a similarly unswerving determination and absence of self-doubt. The trouble is that by the early 18th century, it was no longer the king or queen who held the reins of power; it was the Prime Minister. For much of Caroline’s time as Queen, the Premier was Robert Walpole.

For all that, Caroline was clearly a woman of considerable intellect and boundless curiosity. By the end of her life, even George had come to recognise her qualities.

‘I never saw the woman fit to buckle her bows,’ he told a courtier. Not that he repined for long. Within a year he had installed his mistress in St James’s Palace in her place.